Sunday morning and Jane has volleyball at 9am. I’m pretty sure that volleyball exists only to torture me as weekday practices are often from 7.30 to 9.30 keeping me dressed and awake later than I’d like and weekend practices begin at 9am waking me earlier than necessary.
After picking Jane up at 11 we swing through the grocery store so that I can pick up my Oracea prescription and some sushi for Jane. I stop at the pharmacy and they still haven’t been able to apply the coupon so my Oracea copay is $143 instead of $25. Rather than getting angry I’ll go to another pharmacy. I’m learning from my husband to keep my expectations in line with reality.
Jane and I dash through the produce section, it’s pitiful on a Sunday and she veers off to find some sushi. She is ravenous after two hours of exercise. We meet at the back of the store where I’m looking over the organic beef offerings and I ask her if she got a cucumber roll for her brother. “They aren’t done.” She replies. I ask her how she got the tofu spring roll as I wanted to make sure it wasn’t yesterday’s food.
“Oh, there’s a big stack of sushi so I know it’s fresh, there just wasn’t anyone there.”
I thought Jane was mistaken so before checking out we walked over to the sushi counter and I did see a pyramid of uncut sushi rolls about six wide on the base. Behind the counter were three people working the service deli and one was in front standing next to me.
“Excuse me.” I said, “Can someone get the sushi chef?”
Three employees looked to the ground. The lady next to me who was restocking the break chimed in.
“He’s on lunch break.” She said.
“But all that sushi is just sitting there.”
“He doesn’t work for us, they work for another company and he’s at lunch. I think he’s out front.” She was getting agitated.
“But you sell the sushi, right? It’s pretty gross to leave raw fish just sitting on a counter.”
“They don’t work for Ralphs, they work for some other company you have to come back after his lunch.” Now she’s yelling at me and don’t I understand that they are two different companies?
“But you’re selling sushi that’s just laying on a countertop. People will get sick.” As I’m saying this she turns on her heel and walks away.
I double check Jane’s tofu spring roll to confirm that it has no fish in it and we decide that it’s probably fine to eat. We walk past a harried manager at the self checkout and I explain to the her that I can’t buy sushi, or groceries here, because the fish isn’t safe and I was yelled at. She is exasperated but not surprised.
Jane and I get to the express lane where a short angry lady is unloading a massive cart of groceries. I point to the 15 items or less sign and she puts her hands on her hips and says, “Too damn late now.” And proceeds to unload her cart at a snails pace.
When it’s my turn to check out I ask the cashier why she didn’t say anything and she told me that lady complains to the manager every time and they just let her go. It’s her thing. I mutter something about the fact that I’d never be able to work in a grocery store because I’d just tell her to fuck off, and then I realize I’d just complained to a manger.
Jane enjoyed the tofu roll, my prescription is being filled elsewhere and all Gottliebs are forbidden from eating grocery store sushi ever again.
Big day.
Hah, this made me chuckle and roll my eyes because I have had similar experiences more than once. I wrote a fictional account about a fight at the grocery store (
http://www.thejackb.com/2011/10/18/wasnt-worth-getting-arrested/) Feel free to kill the link if you prefer not to have it here
But the truth is that I have seen disagreements in the check out lines blow up so it is not so far fetched to say that a fist fight could break out.
As for the grocery store story on a whole, well I am not sure if customer service really exists anymore. They have 239 registers that could be manned but only have enough checkers to run 3 at a time.
The self service checkout is a great thing. I just wish that I didn’t get stuck behind the person who doesn’t understand that you have to scan the barcode or it won’t work.
This is exactly why I shop at Trader Joe’s (but wouldn’t eat their sushi) where the checkers and managers rock and fill my prescriptions from a local pharmacy. (But I still laughed at this story Jessica!)